The UpTake: As one component of Google's self-driving car project actually improves on human capabilities, the new mode of transportation gets closer than ever to being a viable product.

Talk about the perfect man for the job. Google’s director of their Self-Driving Car Project, Chris Urmson, actually has a PhD in Off-Road Autonomy. And in a blog-post today the master of autonomous vehicles spilled the beans on technology that one-ups the human eye.

"As it turns out, what looks chaotic and random on a city street to the human eye is actually fairly predictable to a computer," he wrote in a blog post. "Thousands of situations on city streets that would have stumped us two years ago can now be navigated autonomously."

The doctor of Robotics who in 2007 was on a team that won $2 million for their self-driving, off-road vehicle, wrote that Google has improved its software so it can now detect hundreds of distinct objects at the same time, including pedestrians, buses, a stop sign held up by a crossing guard, and a cyclist making gestures that indicate a possible turn, according to the post.

"A self-driving vehicle can pay attention to all of these things in a way that a human physically can’t—and it never gets tired or distracted," he wrote.

Google's vehicles have logged nearly 700,000 autonomous miles, mostly in and around the Mountain View, California, area, where the company is headquarted.

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International estimates that every day 42 people die in the United States due to accidents involving distracted or intoxicated drivers, at a daily cost of $576 million, including car repairs, medical bills, and legal bills.

Estimated daily savings as a result of self-driving cars include 420,000 barrels of oil (a 35 percent reduction) and $6,575 from removing the need for traffic signals, according to the Association report.

Michael del Castillo is the technology and innovation reporter at Upstart Business Journal, a member of American City Business Journals. A graduate of Columbia University, his work has appeared in the New Yorker. He is also the cofounder of Literary Manhattan, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting Manhattan’s literary community and creating new ways to appreciate literature.

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